About a week ago, critics of podcasting were cheering a report released by Forrester Research that only 3% of the 5,051 people surveyed said they’ve ever tried listening to a podcast.

“See,” critics sneered. “Podcasting is just a fad.”

Well, hold on bronco! Feedburner just released a report with actual numbers – not guestimates from surveys of a small sample of people – that show that those who subscribe to podcasts are now in the millions. Just under 1.6-million to be more exact.

How does Feedburner measure this? Well, they have snazzy statistics that help podcast producers know how many people subscribe to their podcast, which podcatcher subscribers are using and some other cool stuff.

The report went on to highlight these points:

• There are just under 45,000 podcasts serving just under 1.6-million podcast subscribers.
• Twenty percent of all new feeds created through Feedburner are podcast feeds.
• Podcast feeds have grown 15% each month between June 2005 and April 2006.
• Fifty-seven percent of podcast listeners use iTunes to access their podcasts.
• The viral nature of podcast feeds means that they’re resyndicated, thus increasing its reach.
• Based on current growth, there will be over 100,000 podcasts and 5-million podcast subscribers by the end of this year.
• Podcasters will start making money and demanding the tools to help them measure their listenership.

Interesting. I still hold firm that podcasting is the wave of the future, especially in light of declining radio listenership.